House Fails to Override SCHIP Veto

October 18, 2007

This afternoon, the U.S. House of Representatives failed to override President Bush’s veto of legislation to renew and strengthen the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).The vote was 273-156, or 13 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to override the president’s October 3 veto of the bill (HR 976). The measure would have strengthened and expanded SCHIP by $35 billion over five years, to $60 billion, with the costs offset by increased tobacco taxes.In doing so, the program would have been expanded to an additional 4 million eligible, but thus far unenrolled, children.

With the House failure to override, the legislation is now set aside.Congress did approve a $5 billion extension of SCHIP’s authorization through November 16 in the "continuing resolution" funding bill enacted at the end of September.Thus, Congress and the White House have a few more weeks to resolve their differences over the legislation.Thank you for your advocacy on SCHIP! We will update you when and if Congress takes further action.

Moving forward, NAMI will continue to press on a range of priorities including:

A requirement for private sector SCHIP plans to cover mental illness treatment at parity with all other medical-surgical benefits,

The funding needed to ensure continued coverage for 6.6 million children already in the program and an additional 4 million eligible, but as yet unenrolled children, and